


There's Not A Road I Know (That Leads To Anywhere)

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 14:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15390633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: Winter came, and winter went, and somehow they were still living.Dragons came, and dragons went, and somehow they were still living.Men came, and men went, andsomehowthey were still living.





	There's Not A Road I Know (That Leads To Anywhere)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/gifts).



> The working title for this was 'angst oh god why would you write this', but Vana told me I should post it, so I am :D And if you note the tags, you'll see that maybe not all hope is lost.

Winter came, and winter went, and somehow they were still living.

Dragons came, and dragons went, and somehow they were still living. 

Men came, and men went, and _somehow_ they were still living. 

It didn’t seem fair, that they should go on when so many had not. How many? Hundreds? Thousands? Thousands who didn’t live the Winter.

It didn’t seem fair. 

And hadn’t Stannis always valued fairness above all? And where had that got them? A prison cell in the Red Keep where the woman who sat the throne punished them with mercy. She gave them the worst possible penalty, when she refused to take their lives from them. 

Davos had long given up cursing her. 

Stannis had never talked much and he did so even less now, since the day he’d watched his men burn. He accepted his prison cell, his punishment, and only the grinding of his teeth ever let on that he was burning with how own rage. 

That, and the screaming nightmares that shook the bed. Davos hated the nightmares. His, and Stannis’. He did not think either of them would ever get over the sight of the dragons coming over the Wall, burning White Walkers and Stannis’ men alike. Indiscriminate. 

The smell of burning, and the screams. The terrible, terrible screams, and the two of them captured by the girl and her men, forced to watch and listen until the last cry for help. 

She saved the kingdom, people said afterwards, saved Westeros from the curse of the North. She did. And she was a murderer. Davos had watched them being murdered. Each and every one. 

“You understand,” Tyrion Lannister said afterwards, speaking for her. “There was no time. We would have been overrun if we had waited to pull your men back.”

Davos spat in his face.

Jorah Mormont, who had once fought at Davos’ side, _Stannis’ side_ , knocked Davos out with one swipe of his great fist, and he had woken, bound hand and foot, in a wagon that was heading for King’s Landing. 

His head had not hurt as much as seeing Stannis bound at his side. 

He used to mark the passing of the time, until he had covered an entire wall, and then he gave up. There was no point to it, after all. It was not as though the counting would ever come to an end. 

After a year – or maybe two – they made a plan to let it end. To just stop eating the food they were given, and fade quietly to nothing. Stannis barely ate as it was, no more than a few bites a day. Davos had never known how the man sustained himself, except that the burning indignant rage could have played its part. 

The plan failed. The Queen would not let them loose so easily. They were, the Imp told them, there to show her enemies the price of rebellion. 

Davos supposed the woman thought it was mercy to put them together, and Davos could not say he wasn’t grateful, like a dog that knows the mistress could kick if she wanted to. 

At least he could hold Stannis, through the worst of their nightmares. 

And as the years went by, he could see Stannis going grey, and although he had no mirror, Davos knew his beard was turning white. 

He would pace the length of the cell, and when they were allowed out to take some fresh air, he paced then too. Stannis would sit still, eyes closed, and breathe the salty air deep into his lungs. Davos thought the sea air was what kept him alive for so long. It reminded him of the home he had lost, the daughter who had loved him, the mother that he had always longed for to return.

There was no one left though. Of that Davos was almost sure. They had only one another. So the day that a man appeared at the cell door, a guard they did not know, he understood why Stannis flattened himself against the back wall.

_Robert?_

It was not Robert, back from the dead. 

It was Edric Storm, long banished by Stannis and long ago saved by Davos, and he had come to set them free. 

He put them on a boat, as Davos had put him in a boat so many years ago, and they sailed from the harbour towards a ship that Davos still dreamed of, sometimes. 

Salladhor Saan leaned on a cane these days, and had perfectly white hair, but it was him. Stannis was not strong enough to know where they were, and Edric carried him – so gentle, so unlike his father – to a bunk where Salladhor’s doctor was waiting for him. 

And when a young woman, beautiful even with her face marred with greyscale, appeared on the deck, Davos found that he could stand no longer. 

He went to his knees and kissed his old friend’s hands, and he wept, until he was pulled to his feet. Salladhor was crying too, always soft-hearted.

“Come, my friend,” he said. “We are taking you home."

**Author's Note:**

> *Insert Brokeback Mountain 'I wish I knew how to quit you' gif* for these two losers who I always think I'm over and then I never am <3


End file.
